President Biden's State of the Union address was portrayed as a great opportunity for Biden to address the concerns the American public has about his competence and mental capacity to be president.

Despite absolutely glowing media reviews, the speech has helped Biden's electoral prospects as much as Madame Web has helped Sony Pictures' bottom line. 

#Trump2024
The Redemption Begins
2016 Election - A New Hope
2020 Election - The Empire Strikes Back
2024 Election - Return of the Jedi

— Anthony911735 (@anthony911735) March 12, 2024

The Forbes/HarrisX poll's results are hard to reconcile with the optimism that the White House and the MSM had portrayed prior to and just subsequent to the delivery of the address. By any measure Joe Biden is in deep political trouble, and if he is saved it will not be due to his own efforts, but through a massively expensive political operation run by deeply unethical people. 

So let's look at the most important results. 

The poll was taken between March 8th to the 10th, so right after the president's speech, and was intended to capture the effects of the speech itself on the opinion people have of Joe Biden and his competitiveness in the November election. And the answer is that Joe Biden is not competitive, at least not right now. 

While the poll doesn't break down by state, and hence can't tell us about the all-important swing states, Biden should be shocked to see that in a head-to-head matchup he loses the popular vote by 4 points. 

As you recall, the presidential election was very tight in the swing states, with Trump barely losing, in the country as a whole Biden overperformed Trump by a rather large margin. Biden captured 51% of the vote and Trump 47%.

The tables have turned. If you include people who are leaning one direction or another, Trump wins 52% to 48%, which equates to a 15 million vote shift if the next election has turnout similar to 2020. 

But that isn't the worst news for Biden, because Biden and Trump will not be going head-to-head this November. Others will be on the ballot, and they take their considerable number of voters from Joe Biden primarily. 

Robert Kennedy Jr. takes a bit from Trump, but drives Biden down to 38%, absolutely killing Biden's chances to win even with massive cheating. As Hugh Hewitt says, you have to win beyond the margin of fraud, and 6% is well beyond that. 

Immigration is one of the most devastating issues for Biden, and voters didn't like what they heard.

"56% said the President did an inadequate job addressing immigration."@DritanNesho, founder and CEO of @Harris_X_, joins @_brittanylewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss Biden's State of the Union address. pic.twitter.com/Oj1E1uTimn

— Forbes (@Forbes) March 12, 2024

As devastating as these numbers are, they are more revealing about the current electoral landscape than predictive of the final vote totals. Elections are decided by the people who show up, and many of the people who will "show up" in this election will not be voters with much enthusiasm about politics. 

Ballot harvesting has fundamentally changed the nature of elections, as people who simply don't care allow others to vote for them. They hand over their ballots and, let's face it, others vote for them. If there is a massive enough ballot harvesting campaign that could impact the final vote totals where they matter: in the swing states. 

So what this poll tells us is how massive the problem Democrats face is. They won't have to harvest a few million ballots to carry Biden across the finish line, but with Kennedy in the race they have a monumental and perhaps impossible task. 

Without help Biden can't recover from these numbers. There simply is no gas left in the tank, and no opportunities to make up this kind of ground in so short a time. The economy will not dramatically improve in months, crime will not disappear, and the border will remain a disaster. If there were a turnaround in 2023 Biden would likely be doing reasonably well, but given how skeptical people are at the moment it's hard to see what Biden himself can do to improve his chances. 

So expect more lawfare, more slander, and more voting irregularities. None of these is guaranteed to work, but they are all the Democrats have right now.